With our reviews, we lead the discussion about what is valuable and why.

Our writing team covers exhibitions and performances in Philadelphia and elsewhere. We also cover books and movies. We look, take notes, ask questions and listen. We take pictures, make video and audio recordings. We think about what we see and have opinions. And we write our hearts out, every day.

Samuel Brown reviews “Knowledge Lost” at Gallery 1201, by the artist collective “Difference Engine,” (John Bezark and Chris Baldys.) Brown says this interactive installation, which prompts you to write a eulogy out of deleted Wikipedia entires on an old computer, is especially impactful when experienced in solitude. The show closes Friday, Mar. 22, so catch it quick before it’s gone.

Flora Ward visits Ballet X’s Spring Series, reviews the three pieces in the program and articulates the show’s highlights and a few shortcomings with poetic descriptors. She applauds the shadowy finale, which left her speechless. This series ended on March 17th, 2019, so make sure to catch Ballet X’s Summer Season, coming up July 10-21.

Samuel Brown writes a thoughtful review of Joakim Ojanen’s recent show “Snake Pit” at The Hole NYC! Buy yourself a bus ticket and catch this quirky show– a world building installation filled with odd, anxious, cheeky, and playful characters– before April 14th, 2019!

Public art nerds! Artblog contributor Andrea Kirsh penned a thoughtful piece on “Siah Armajani: Follow This Line” (on view NOW at the Met Breuer!) Armajani, who was forced to leave Iran in the 1960s for political reasons, creates witty works that comment on American building forms and pose questions about social interactions with public spaces. Don’t miss “Siah Armajani: Follow This Line” on view until June 2nd, 2019!

Logan Cryer writes an insightful appreciation of the Women’s Mobile Museum culminating exhibition. The group photography show by — and depicting — women involved in the year-long project at PPAC, has some great self-representation, and Logan concludes that photography is the best medium with which to examine issues of who is normally represented in art works and who is normally excluded. The exhibition is up at PPAC through March 30.

In her review of Cecilia Vicuña exhibition, Andrea Kirsh calls the works — little cobbled-together objects tacked to the walls or arrayed on a low platform on the floor — marvels. But these objects are not nothings to throw away but objects with magical shadows and poetic meanings, and their mystery delights.

Sam Brown sees a provocative show at Second State Press of printed posters made by the group “Prints for Protest.” He appreciates how many different ways artists in the show connect with protest issues alive today.

Levi Bentley examines the complex melange of past, present and future in Alexis Pauline Gumbs’s book, “M Archive,” a work of speculative fiction that argues that Black feminist thought holds the “connection and knowledge and care of the earth and its people together through all time,” as Bentley says in their immersive review.

What is the role of an artist when their old neighborhood is gentrified by art galleries and the neighborhood doesn’t want them there? This highly topical question, and others, are examined by Guadalupe Rosales in her splendid “Legends Never Die: A Collective Memory,” at Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, Haverford College. Deborah Krieger writes a great personal take on the show.

Ilana Napoli revisits the Edison Price Lighting factory in Queens for the second year in a row to see the exhibition at the company’s gallery space, with art made by artists from upcycled materials from the factory. She applauds the art and industry program and notes that it positively impacts the artists in residence as well as the factory workers, who are very interested in the art program and set aside interesting left-over materials for the artists to use in creating new art.

Sarah Kim visits the exhibit at the William Way Center and views art whose materials defiantly separate it from traditional mainstream art. Altars made with found materials; altered photo-portraiture; drawing installations and collage, made by six artists, the art is metaphorical and symbolic of the state of being in flux, in transition. Kim’s powerful writing leads you through the exhibit, adding insightful commentary and insights. After considering this show about fluid states of identity, Kim concludes that ultimately, selfhood is the experience itself, and art, which is based in objecthood, can point the way.

Mark Lord sees the installation of monumental waterfall paintings by Pat Steir at the Barnes and points out the works’ eerie connection to our world of melting glaciers and other tragic cascades of water when natural forces are disrupted as they have been by global warming. In his lyrical post, Lord writes of beauty and something cosmic in the drips, splashes and vigorous build ups of Steir’s painted moments. This under-sung artist is the subject of an upcoming documentary film. See Steir’s waterfall paintings at the Barnes Foundation through Nov. 17, 2019. Be sure to scroll down to the bottom of the post for more photos!

“Charting a Path to Resistance,” a new Percent for Art mural at the Philadelphia City Archives is an abstract representation of the struggles of African Americans in Philadelphia and their resistance to injustices perpetrated upon them. The new commission by Talia Greene uses a gridded timeline supplemented by written material available via tablet in the Archives space. Michael Lieberman notes that the new mural’s graphic display, while not self-evident in meaning, becomes clearer upon reading the copious research material provided by the artist in the tablets. The educational value of the mural is clear, even if the graphical interface is not.

“Cornucopia / Urn” is a show at Spillway Gallery that features work by Nora Chellew and Suldano Abdiruhman. Samuel writes about the interplay between these two artists and how they create a dream-like space that evokes the fragmentation of memory and the nostalgic feelings we have towards the past. He also reached out to the show’s Curator, Babs Weiss, to learn more about the thought-process behind the exhibition’s conception. The show closes on February 9th, so make your way on over!